Fusion Agiletech-Quisitive eye private blockchain expansion

Quisitive is on course for becoming a Microsoft consulting partner with national reach, according to investment group Fusion Agiletech; other news from the week.

February 2, 2018

Published on TechTarget.com by Spencer Smith and John Moore

An investment group has acquired Quisitive LLC as the first step toward creating a Microsoft consulting partner with national scale and expertise in such fields as private blockchain and agile development.

Fusion Agiletech Partners Inc., based in Toronto, is now the parent company of Quisitive, which will maintain its current headquarters in Dallas. Mike Reinhart, president and CEO at Quisitive, will remain as that company’s president and take on the additional role of CEO at Fusion Agiletech.

Quisitive, a digital technology consulting firm, pursues digital transformation projects, offering a range of services including cloud migration and development services around Microsoft Azure, user experience design, custom application development and Sitecore implementation. Microsoft and Sitecore have been the company’s main technology partners. Quisitive is one of a handful of digital consultants participating in the Microsoft Customer Engagement Alliance Program, a sounding board for Microsoft’s digital transformation initiatives.

Fusion Agiletech’s strategy is to purchase Microsoft-focused partners, a market that Rinehart views as ripe for consolidation. Just in the cloud space, Microsoft recently tallied up more than 68,000 partners — a 33% year-over-year increase.

“The game plan, as we look at it, is to grow a national-scale partner across the U.S. that is Microsoft-focused, leveraging their technologies,” Reinhart said.

Reinhart noted while there’s a need for smaller niche partners, Microsoft currently lacks partners with a national footprint. “They [Microsoft] don’t have a strong ecosystem of scale partners,” he said.

For Microsoft, the number of channel partners the company sells through in a given region can be overwhelming, Reinhart said. The ability to work with partners with broader reach will make for more efficient selling and reduce the amount of time Microsoft spends managing channel partners in a particular region, he added.

Reinhart said the Fusion Agiletech growth plan addresses Microsoft’s field sales reorganization and greater focus on vertical markets, two initiatives the vendor kicked off in 2017. He said the shift aims to create a much more industry-centric go-to-market strategy, noting the Fusion Agiletech investment strategy will take verticals into account. Initially, the company will focus on financial services and the oil and gas sector, Reinhart said. The retail industry is next on the list after those verticals, he added.

Private blockchain and other technologies

From a technology standpoint, Fusion Agiletech and its Quisitive portfolio company will seek to expand its business in blockchain technology, an area in which Quisitive already provides services. The emphasis will be on Microsoft technology and private blockchain deployments for enterprise customers.

While a public blockchain is open to anyone, an organization or consortium running a private blockchain controls access.

Reinhart said Fusion Agiletech and Quisitive will pursue private blockchain use cases such as smart contracts, supply chain management and payments in financial services. Quisitive currently has blockchain proof-of-concept initiatives underway in the financial services and oil and gas industries. Those efforts are based on Azure-enabled blockchain services.

Agile is another area slated for investment. Here, Agile techniques will be used to modernize applications migrating to the cloud or building new applications.

To help spur technology and geographic expansion, Fusion Agiletech plans to go public in Canada in 2018, a move that will provide additional investment funds, Reinhart said.